The massive assault on Austro-Hungarian forces was intended to aid already or soon-to-be hard-pressed Russian allies France, Italy, and Britain, while also hoping to knock an enemy empire out of the war.

With their empire in tatters, postwar Britons were desperate for a source of renewal to pierce their collective mourning; they needed grand projects to restore national pride. They looked eastward, and up. Starting in 1920 the lexicon and tactics of war were applied to the attempts to scout and conquer Everest. Vast expeditions — the first in 1903-4 had taken a load so hefty that 88 porters died of exhaustion — made their way across the Tibetan plateau.

One hundred years ago today began the terrible battle of Verdun. The German strategy called not so much for territorial conquest as for simply killing as many Frenchmen as possible, to "bleed France white". The name of the plan was Operation Gericht, as in judgement or, grimmer still, the place of execution. Up to nearly one million casualties resulted.

The battle was the most bloody and destructive of World War One up until that point. It would last for the rest of 1916, continuous fighting lasting for more than 300 days. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo
on Feb 21, 2016 -
48 comments

One hundred years ago, the last Allied day at Gallipoli. "The evacuation had been carried out brilliantly, of that there can be no doubt." (Peter Hart) After months of agonized fighting between forces from multiple nations, the Allies withdrew from Gallipoli, ending one of WWI's most remembered and discussed campaigns. One hundred years ago today the last British soldiers left the peninsula, leaving behind booby traps, animals dead and alive, material destroyed and as booty, and the victorious Turks. [more inside]
posted by doctornemo
on Jan 9, 2016 -
15 comments

When Britain entered the war in Europe in 1914, it wasn't a sufficiently existential threat for Parliament to authorize a draft, so enlistment in the armed services was still voluntary. To "encourage" enlistment, Vice-Admiral Charles Penrose-Fitzgerald organized a group of women known as the Order of the White Feather. Their task -- to hand a white feather to any military-aged man they saw out of uniform. [more inside]
posted by Etrigan
on Nov 11, 2015 -
47 comments

When he was promoted to officer rank at eighteen, S. L. A. Marshall was the youngest shavetail in the United States Army during World War I. He rejoined the Army in 1942, became a combat historian with the rank of colonel; and the notes he made at the time of the Normandy landing are the source of this heroic reminder. Readers will remember his frank and ennobling book about Korea, The River and the Gauntlet, which was the result of still a third tour of duty.

"Look around Endell Street in Holborn today and you could be forgiven for thinking it just an average London street. But one hundred years ago this year, this non-descript spot just off of Shaftesbury avenue was home to an important, and now near-forgotten, part of British history – the Endell Street Military Hospital, the first British Army hospital staffed, and managed, entirely by women.”

No standard biography of Roth exists in English, but this collection of his letters, superbly translated and judiciously edited by long-time Roth advocate Michael Hofmann, provides a more intimate portrait than any biography could. Roth’s letters are a study in authorial candor: in vino veritas, at least in part, for some of them were composed while he was drunk, getting that way, or hungover—the grim trinity that dominated his life more and more until he died of it, plus weltschmerz, in Paris in 1939. He was just short of 45 and had come a long way to die so young. He left behind one masterpiece, The Radetzky March, in which, in a series of vivid set-pieces, he evokes the reality of life high and low during the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s long decline, a vast theme encapsulated in the Trotta family, who ascend to nobility and imperial favor from provincial origins on the obscure fringes of the realm.

The history of soccer in the First World War — which began in earnest 100 years ago this month — is a history of two worlds in unresolvable tension. It’s the story of a failed metaphor. Soccer in Oblivion.
posted by Ghostride The Whip
on Aug 7, 2014 -
2 comments

14-18 NOW is a project commissioning contemporary artists to commemorate the centennial of the First World War and explore its resonance and effects today. For three summers (2014, 2016, and 2018), the organization is presenting a summer season of events. This summer's opening act was curated by Billy Bragg at Glastonbury; live performances can be found on the site. Other events include a radio series of essays on the theme of Goodbye to All That, cartoons, recreating Dazzle Ships, and letters to an unknown soldier (including the opportunity to write your own).
posted by immlass
on Jul 11, 2014 -
3 comments

From his time in Cairo, Lawrence was aware of the extravagant promises the British government had made to Hussein in order to raise the Arab Revolt: full independence for virtually the entire Arab world..............His first act of sedition — and by most any standards, a treasonous one — was to inform Faisal of the existence of Sykes-Picot.....The True Story of Lawrence of Arabia
. Previously and Previously
posted by lalochezia
on Jul 1, 2014 -
11 comments

World War I in Color is a documentary designed to make the Great War come alive for a 21st-century audience. The events of 1914-18 are authoritatively narrated by Kenneth Branagh, who presents the military and political overview, while interviews with historians add different perspectives in six 48 minute installments annotated within. [more inside]
posted by Blasdelb
on Oct 31, 2013 -
60 comments

"Technically it’s not a book at all: The Great War is actually one continuous drawing, a 24ft-long panorama narrating the British forces’ experience of 1 July 1916, spatially and chronologically, from orderly morning approach to chaotic battlefield engagement to grim aftermath. There are no boxes of text or speech bubbles, no individuated characters, instead Sacco portrays a mass event in painstaking, monochrome, almost technical detail. It’s like a cross between Hergé and the Chapman brothers; the Bayeux Tapestry as a silent movie." -- Cartoonist Joe Sacco's latest project, The Great War is about one particular day in the War: 1 July, the start of the Battle of the Somme. [more inside]
posted by MartinWisse
on Oct 18, 2013 -
20 comments

In 1914, Captain Robert Campbell was taken captive by the German Army. In 1916, he got word that his mother back in England was dying. He was given a laissez-passer to visit her on condition that he return to captivity as soon as practicable.
An officer and a gentleman, he did exactly that.[more inside]
posted by IndigoJones
on Sep 25, 2013 -
56 comments

"It’s not often that one finds buried treasure, but that’s exactly what happened in Wayland High School’s History Building as we prepared to move to a new campus. Amidst the dusty collection of maps featuring the defunct USSR, decades-old textbooks describing how Negroes are seeking equality, and film strips pieced together with brittle scotch tape, was a gray plastic Samsonite briefcase, circa 1975."
posted by Kid Charlemagne
on Sep 4, 2013 -
40 comments

Pitch Battles: How a paranoid fringe group made musical tuning an international issue.

The petition had its origins in one of the strangest conflicts to have overtaken classical music in the past thirty years, and many of these luminaries were completely unaware of what they’d gotten themselves into. The sponsor of both the petition and the conference that featured Tebaldi was an organization called the Schiller Institute, dedicated to, among other things, lowering standard musical pitch. ...
But behind this respectable front lurks a strange mélange of conspiracy, demagoguery, and cultish behavior. At its founding in 1984, its chairman Helga Zepp-LaRouche laid out the Institute’s role in surprisingly apocalyptic terms

There is no decent way of containing the excesses of Gabriele d'Annunzio's lives. It would astonish his contemporaries to discover that he is now only faintly remembered outside Italy. Even within Italy, though firmly entrenched in the literary canon, he is most commonly recalled with a sort of collective cringe. For once upon a time, in the fervid fin de siècle - for reasons variously literary, political, military and, not least, sexual - he was one of the towering figures of European culture. Think Wilde crossed with Casanova and Savonarola; Byron meets Barnum meets Mussolini - and you would have some of the flavours, but still not quite the essence, of this extraordinary, unstoppable and in many ways quite ridiculous figure

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